


Something Too Heavy, Even For This Steady Night

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [4]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Conversations, Cara has spoken, Din and Cara are bad at Adulting, Din is a Mandork, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Feelings Realization, Idiots in Love, Mandalorian Culture, Miscommunication, Soft kissing, Stargazing, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22864813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: And you laugh.Loudly–head tipping backand while your eyesare on the ceilingI am mouthingsomething too heavy evenfor this steady night to shoulder.'This is not a joke.'I mouth.'Love me. Love me.'— Letters from Medea, Salma Deera[ Din and Cara watch the stars. They're alsoverybad at feelings. ]
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 21
Kudos: 193





	Something Too Heavy, Even For This Steady Night

_And you laugh.  
Loudly–  
head tipping back  
and while your eyes  
are on the ceiling  
I am mouthing  
something too heavy even  
for this steady night to shoulder.  
 **'This is not a joke.'** I mouth.  
 **'Love me. Love me.'**_

— Letters from Medea, Salma Deera

***

It looks like the sky has too many stars, here.

Maybe it's the night that is so impossibly dark here, in the absolute middle of nowhere. Maybe it's the crystal-clear air, making everything look brighter, larger.

The green lands of Dantooine are silent, painted by a pale glow that turns the landscape into an opalescent mirage.

"Well, at least we've got this."

Cara takes a long sip from the bottle and hands it over to Din, who takes it without much enthusiasm. They're both sitting with their backs against the huge trunk of an equally huge tree, and it's dark enough, here, for him to be without his helmet without any worry. The shade of the tree protects him from what little light coming from the starlit skies above.

From his position, he's allowed to see Cara's profile, a thin outline of silver drawing the perfect curve of her nose, her lips, her chin. The black of her eyes is one with the night, the same stars from above shining in them in a shimmering reflection,

Din gulps a sip of the liquor. It's cheap and disgusting and he and Cara had to challenge each other to a drinking game in order to find the guts to empty the other two bottles. This is the last one, and Din couldn't think of a better occasion than this to drain the last of this poor excuse of alcohol: it's been a rough day and their trip to the abandoned Jedi Temple left them with nothing but more questions.

"Yeah," he agrees, letting his head fall back to the tree trunk with a faint thud. He dares a muffled half a laugh. "Best home-made brew in the whole sector," he snorts, mocking the voice of the vendor of Tatooine. He takes another sip, twisting his face in a grimace as he swallows. "Tastes like damn piss."

Cara laughs. "I'm not gonna ask how you know that."

"It's a figure of speech."

"Hope so, Mister Figure of Speech," she says, snatching the bottle back from him. "It would be really gross to be sharing spit with someone who's tasted piss. _Actual_ piss," she stresses, somehow predicting his response. "Not this stomach-wrenching rotgut."

She downs a generous sip and Din watches in delight as her beautiful features crumple in revulsion. He would be ready to go through another three or four bottles of this shit just to see Cara's face do _that._

In the back of his mind, a thought is working its way up, shoving aside barriers of rationality with alarming easiness: Cara makes him _happy._

It would be a shocking realisation if he hadn't always been secretly aware of this since the moment he met her. It meant nothing, at first. On Sorgan, she just gave him a fun confrontation, showed off a confidence in her skills as a fighter and as a soldier, and to this day he hasn't forgotten how charmed he was straight away with her. To this day, he also hasn't forgotten that without her he would have lost the child, back on that tiny, insignificant planet, and this is a debt he can't possibly pay off. This is the whole point, though: Cara never did a single thing for personal profit – from helping out those villagers to joining Din in the trap Greef had set up for him and the child.

For quite a while, it escaped him why she would be willing to risk so much for a guy and a kid she barely knew, until he realised that, day by day, _barely_ had become _quite well,_ and quite well had become _very well,_ and it’s rather obvious by now that the sense of instant trust and immediate attachment he and Cara felt for one another always had a name, though neither of them seems particularly interested in acknowledging this just yet.

And Din isn’t even sure it’s the same name they have in mind every time they catch themselves looking at each other in silence for no reason at all, but he can’t ask – can’t jeopardise what they have in favour of something that might never exist.

So here they are – shoulder to shoulder under the stars, just happy to be sharing space and drinks and the comfort of some body heat.

As pointless and disappointing as their few days here have been, it took her nothing to brush his sense of helplessness off with a couple of playful jokes and, of course, the proposal of celebrating the failure of this mission with their favourite alcoholic failure. So she lulled the child to sleep and then dragged Din out of the ship to sit with him where they are now, to watch the stars, and talk about everything and nothing, forgetting for a little while about missions and worries.

It took Din less than ten minutes to get rid of his helmet, which now lies, almost forgotten, next to him on the grass. He thanks the pitch black of this night and the pale glow of these stars for granting him this brief glimpse of freedom. The spectacular show above him wouldn't be half as beautiful through his visor. Or without Cara's warm presence beside him.

“It's kinda like second-hand kissing, isn't it?” she muses, lowering the bottle from her lips and watching it curiously. Din would think she's getting tipsy if he didn't know better: it takes way more than a few sips of cheap alcohol to get the marvellous Cara Dune anywhere near drunk. So he just grins, takes the bottle and gulps his own share.

This stuff really is disgusting.

“You make the most absurd connections when you're drunk,” he teases, just because he knows Cara is very proud of her alcohol tolerance.

“I'm not drunk,” she grunts, as outraged as Din predicted. “This shit is probably burning my brain cells.”

She steals the bottle from Din's hand a draws a particularly long sip, just to prove her point. The way her throat bobs as she swallows causes a little commotion inside Din's chest.

Grimacing in disgust, Cara wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and shoves the bottle back to Din, who observes it with inappropriate fondness.

Second-hand kissing indeed. And if she can mention it with such light-heartedness, it means she doesn't mind, after all.

But why mention it at all, Din wonders. Now he can't stop thinking of the hundreds of times he and Cara have _second-hand kissed,_ and his hands are sweating a little.

“I'm flattered your brain cells think about kissing me while they die.”

He doesn't know where this flirtatious boldness is coming from. She's the one who sparks the flirting, usually, and he's the one who tries too keep up, though most of the time he's too charmed by her dialectic skills to even bother keeping up with her. Cara is a woman of many beauties, and Din is only human: only one of these beauties would be enough to get a man on his knees in sheep adoration; all of them combined in a simultaneous attack? Not fair. He's also quite certain Cara isn't even aware of this power she has, which makes it twice as dangerous.

As if to confirm Din's musings, Cara relaxes back against the trunk, head tipped back towards the myriad of constellations dusting the black canopy up there. The white shirt she sleeps in is old and worn and the wide neckline has started slipping off her shoulder, exposing a mesmerising glimpse of bones and muscles Din can't stop thinking about, even after forcibly averting his eyes. It's engraved into his mind, now – the graceful curve of her neck merging into her shoulder, the smooth, silky look of her skin... How would it feel to trail his lips along that spot? Would she like it? Would his stubble make her shiver?

Din's thoughts are mercifully cut off one second before they reach the point of no return when Cara wistfully mutters:

“It's a good night for kisses.”

Din lets his head roll sideways in her direction. If only she knew what is going on in his mind right now...

“Look at that,” she continues in an adorably awed tone, jerking her chin toward the sky. “Reminds a bit of Sorgan. That night we spent on the cart?”

She looks at him expectantly, as if she's not sure he knows what she's talking about. But he does. He will never forget that – the beginning of everything they are today.

“I remember that night.”

They stare at each other through the dark. Din can see Cara's features as pale contours, can the the small smile stretching the full shape of her lips; all she probably sees of him is a faceless shadow.

"We're such an old married couple,” she giggles quietly, nudging his side with an elbow. “Stargazing on the grass sipping-” She looks down at the bottle in his hand and scoffs. “Yeah, not the most romantic beverage, maybe."

Din doesn't know anything about being in love.

He doesn't know what it's supposed to feel like and how it's supposed to progress, especially when developed in secrecy. If it was puzzling, at first, when he would feel those sudden flares of warmth inside whenever Cara touched him, smiled at him or even smiled at all, it quickly grew worse with time, as a strange pang of pain started coming with the warmth, a feeling Din can't quite place to this day, after living with it for months. He doesn't know if this is right, if it's meant to feel good _and_ hurt at the same time. It's nothing like his love for the kid: that sort of love is simple, pure, and has the sheer colour of white light when it bursts into his chest. What he feels for Cara is like that, sometimes, and sometimes it's red – angry red, passionate red – and it rages like fire, violent and hot and fascinatingly hungry; sometimes it's blue and makes him feel cold and melancholic, _loney,_ even if she's sitting right at his side. Sometimes it feels like every colour out there is crashing into a mad swirl inside his soul, making it impossible for him to figure out how he truly feels, making his head spin, taking his breath away.

It doesn't help that Cara is the living embodiment of everything a Mandalorian looks for in a partner – brave, strong and resilient, a formidable fighter, skilled with weapons and a lethal weapon herself. Her beauty and her grace are worthless to a Mandalorian's eyes, but Din, despite his upbringing, has grown to love this side of her charm, too: the breath-taking darkness of her eyes, the perfect slope of her nose, the hypnotic swing of her hips as she walks... And that smile. That smile she has painted on her lips right now as she observes the distant twinkle of the stars, half amazed and half amused.

He could kill for that smile.

"This is your idea of romantic?" he asks, trying to sound casual.

Cara joins her hands over her stomach with a light shrug.

"Yeah. What's yours?"

It's a tough question. Din grew up with an idea of romance that, as he discovered growing up, most people in the galaxy find disturbing: Mandalorian courtship involves fighting and blood and bruises – the more, the better – and the most appreciated gift one could give to their better half is a good weapon. Funnily enough, he's absolutely positive a good weapon would be Cara's gift of choice in any occasion, but this is not what she's asking right now: she wants to know about what makes Din's heart beat faster and swell with emotion, and he can't really tell her that he finds all of this every time they fight someone together in perfect sync.

"I... don't really know," he mumbles.

"Well, trust me,” laughs Cara. “This _is_ romantic."

The situation, he must admit, has its own charm. He can see why people would spend nights like this huddled together sharing caresses and kisses. It's an awareness that makes this moment even more controversial.

"You dragged me out here to share this _romantic_ view with me?"

The question doesn't seem to perturb Cara as much as it perturbs Din.

"Why not?" she says with another shrug. She keeps her eyes trained on the sky, but a hint of dimples appears in her cheeks, and Din knows she's not completely nonchalant as she's trying to appear.

"I might get the wrong idea," he dares. At this point, it's go big or go home.

He sees Cara's dark irises glitter in the deep blue darkness surrounding her. She's turned to him, chest rising and falling with her deep breaths; he can see a glimpse of white teeth bite into a corner of her bottom lip as she observes him, and Din knows he's protected by the shade of the tree, making him a shadow himself, but this doesn't stop him from feeling exposed.

"Wrong idea?" she repeats slowly, a tinge of laughter lacing her tone. "As in, _you and me?"_

Her shoulders starts shaking. Soon her composure breaks: she throws her head back as the sound of her full laughter fills the silence of the night. To Din, it feels like a fist in his chest.

"Can you imagine," Cara giggles in delight, wiping a tear from an eye. _"Us_ as a happy, stargazing couple?"

Din's hand tightens around the bottle.

 _Yes,_ he thinks bitterly. _I can._

He thought this was how she felt, too.

Cara keeps laughing, and Din doesn't know what to do with the warmth that just watching her spreads in his chest. It's a broken feeling; its sharp edges cut into Din's soul, wounding a hope that is starting to wither before it could even bloom: Cara is laughing at the thought of the two of them together – so genuinely Din can't even bring himself to hate her for how much she's hurting him – and all he can do is sit here, cursing every single star up there for making him believe.

The worst thing about this whole thing is that, in fact, they already _are_ a happy couple. Maybe not exactly as Din would like, but a couple nonetheless. And as to _happy..._ he knows he's not the only one who has found comfort in their mutual company. After all of this, the talk of romantic views and second-hand kisses... he genuinely believed Cara felt the same as he does.

She clearly doesn't.

 _Stop it,_ he wants to snap, though he's sure it would sound more like a prayer. _Stop laughing. Why do you think I'm joking?_

He's never felt like this for anyone – he didn't even think he _could_ feel like this. And Cara thinks it's _funny._

It takes her more than just a few seconds to realise something is off. Her laughter dies out, disappearing from her voice first, then from her eyes. She tires to look at him.

"You're not laughing," she notes, a bit breathless.

Din has lost his chatty mood. He stands up, leaving the bottle on the grass.

"No," he whispers dryly. "I'm not."

"Din, what the-” Cara jumps to her feet to run after him. She grabs his arm, makes him turn around and face her. “Did you _mean_ it?"

He refuses to look at her.

"Mean what?"

"When you said... about us..."

"I don't think it matters."

Cara scoffs. "I think it does."

No, it doesn't. Not if she doesn't feel about him how he feels about her.

"You should have asked yourself this question before you laughed about it, then," he says, and he didn't mean to sound so curt, but he just couldn't control himself.

The harshness of his tone lands on Cara like a slap. She looks mortified.

"You're right.” She lets go of his arm and takes a respectful step back, head hanging in regret. “You're absolutely right. I'm sorry."

Din's pulse starts evening out. He can't be mad at her for not returning his feelings. He's the one who should have known better: Cara is like that, witty and flirtatious; it was his mistake to believe this meant more than it does.

"Okay,” he sighs, finally releasing the aching tension in his shoulders. He feels helpless and foolish.

He turns his back to Cara and starts walking away, but she stops him again.

"Din,” she says – begs, almost. “Can we talk about this?"

His hand tightens into a fist as her fingers clench more firmly around his wrist, sensing his instinct to wring out of her grip.

"I'd rather not."

"Alright, fair. Can I do the talking, then?"

It's the gentleness in her voice that convinces him to stay and finally turn to her.

"I'm listening," he concedes. He feels her fingers relax around his wrist, but she doesn't let go of him.

"I wasn't laughing at you or... at the idea of _us,”_ she whispers in an uncharacteristic careful tone. She hesitates, as if looking for the right words, then offers him a tentative smile: “I was just imagining us as a stereotypical couple who walk around hand in hand and call each other stupid pet names as they make out under the stars, and it just...” Her chest starts shaking with laughter again. “Come on, it's funny!"

"If you say so," he replies, just because he doesn't want to show her how easily she can get through to him.

It _is_ funny.

It wouldn't be very much like them to do any of that. This is why he likes Cara so much, after all: her idea of a fun past-time is not a stroll on the beach, but a healthy sparring session followed by a mutual wound assessment. They have this thing that they count each other's bruises after they spar, and whoever has more buys the other drinks. If any brother or sister of Din's clan heard about this, they would accuse him of shamelessly trying to get into Cara's pants. Which is not entirely inaccurate, if only Cara was in any way receptive to Mandalorian courting rituals.

Cara tugs at his hand, exhaling a long sigh.

"My damn big mouth got it out all wrong.” She steps closer, her hands touching his hips with an apologetic squeeze. “Forgive me. Please?”

It's like she's trying to dig deeper into Din's heart with this brittle little voice that feels so much like a caress upon his face. And Din was trained since he was a child to resist to so many types of torture, but _this_ torture? Cara's sweet look and her maddening closeness and that subtle, guilty smile lingering on her lips? Din is not remotely strong enough to resist any of this.

“Okay,” he says, glancing at Cara as though she just knocked him out with a merciless punch, which is exactly the point: she can tear down his walls as easily as she can defeat him in a physical battle.

There is a legend, among his people, about Sorja, a Mandalorian girl so strong and beautiful that she had hundreds of suitors queueing outside her house to win her hand in a fight. But Sorja was too good a fighter for anyone to defeat and stayed unmarried for years. Until she met Taivas, a humble merchant who fell in love with her. Everyone told him his love was hopeless, because no one had ever defeated Sorja and he was weak and pathetic, but Taivas challenged her all the same, and he won, because Sorja let him: she had fallen in love with him, too.

This is what Din sees when he looks at himself and Cara: the powerful, invincible Sorja and poor, vulnerable Taivas, offering all of himself to her without any hope for his love to be returned.

As a child, he remembers thinking, the first time he heard this story, that the ending didn't make any sense, that a Mandalorian would never choose a weakling as her partner. Only with time and experience he learned that Sorja's was never a choice: love isn't decided, it just happens, and at the end of the day hope is all a broken heart has left to hang onto.

So when Cara's hands glide past his hips to lock on the small of his back and she gives him a shy half a smile, Din's heart skips a beat, wondering if, perhaps, not everything is lost.

"So,” she begins, pulling him a little closer. “About you getting the wrong idea out of this..."

He wishes he could see her more clearly, see if her expression is really the mischievous one he can make out in this pale light.

"I was just-" he tries to retort, but Cara's mouth spreads into a full, infuriatingly smug smirk as she shakes her head to interrupt whatever he intended to say.

"No, man. You can't take it back."

No, he guesses he can't. Besides, she doesn't seem so prone to joking about it, all of a sudden.

He feels his hand rise to her face and curl around her jaw as if this is something he does every day – and he does, only it's always been a fantasy in his head, so far.

"Is it a good idea to talk about it now?" he says, thinking about the cheap alcohol they both have in their systems. Maybe it's what is giving them the courage to actually talk about all of this, but it could also make them say something they would regret.

Cara leans into his hand, rubbing her cheek against his palm like a domesticated cat.

"Our alcohol-inhibited filters make it the absolute best moment to talk about it,” she whispers, savouring his touch with her eyes blissfully closed.

Din doesn't know what is happening, but he has a good feeling about where it's going.

"It's not just about our verbal filters I'm worried about," he clarifies. His thumb swiping across Cara's cheek elicits a soft, contented moan from her that punches a choked sigh out of Din's throat.

Cara's eyes open lazily, the mischief in her smirk intensifies. Din is suddenly hyper aware of how her lower body is moulded against his own, inch by excruciating inch. He has no armour to hide behind, just the clothes he sleeps in, and if Cara gets any closer things are going to get very embarrassing for both of them.

"You wanna kiss me, Djarin?" Cara asks in a hoarse drawl he feels with his entire body. And what is he supposed to reply to this? His dry mouth and skyrocketing heartbeat are making it hard to think, let alone lie.

Why lie, anyway?

"Yes."

"Here, in the starlight, like some corny teens?" Cara's head leans to one side as her smirk widens, full of suggestions – full of _promises._

"Yes,” Din confirms, hoping she doesn't notice how his hand is trembling as he strokes her face. “But I'm not gonna do that."

"No?"

Is she disappointed or is it just him hearing what he wants to hear?

"I don't want any of this if it's just for fun,” he informs her. He almost expects Cara to back away, offended by his insinuation; instead, she just looks up at him – at the shadow of him – looking rather intirgued.

"So what you're saying is that you're not interested if there's no... commitment?"

Din bites his tongue. He doesn't want her to think he's trying to extort something she's not ready or willing to give, but he doesn't know how else to say it.

"I know how this sounds..."

Cara moves her hands to his chest and ghosts them up to his shoulders.

"Sounds like you care about me."

It's such an understatement it almost cracks a laugh out of Din. He allows his fingers to spread into the nape of her neck, massaging tenderly while his gaze flickers across her face, drinking in the faint outlines of her features bathed by the starlight.

"You know I do."

Cara laughs, not a loud, uncontrolled laugh like before, but a soft, affectionate one that finds its way to Din's heart and warms him up from the inside.

"Is this a love declaration,” she defiantly asks. “Or just a very misleading display of camaraderie?"

Din can't help laughing, too. He still has no idea how she can so seamlessly strip a moment like this from all tension with just a handful of well-placed words. She's as talented with speech as she is with her punches.

“Why do you have to make everything awkward?” he groans, but it's such an embarrassingly smitten groan it doesn't really count as one.

Cara gives him a sheepish grin.

“I'm _really_ bad at feelings,” she whines, but the amusement in her voice makes Din shake his head indulgently. It's not like he's great with feelings, either.

“Okay,” Cara says out of the blue, taking a deep breath. “You want commitment? Look at us: we've been living together for months, we're taking care of each other, _we're raising a kid...”_ She lets out a small, incredulous giggle. “If we put any more commitment in this relationship we might as well get married."

This is so close to Din's reflections about their bond that he almost can't believe she can see it, too.

The thing is... they _are_ married, in a way.

In his culture, what he and Cara have would be considered an average marriage: people who live together, fight side by side, and take care of each other. They're even parenting a youngling together... To any Mandalorian out there, they're husband and wife, bonded by the holy ties of love, loyalty and mutual respect. And Cara might not be a Mandalorian, but apparently the complexity of their relationship has the same meaning for her as it has for him.

"You're making it sound like we did everything in the wrong order."

"We kinda did,” Cara shrugs. “We've been acting like an actual couple all along, if you think about it. We've just been skipping the most fun part."

"Which is?"

"The actual _coupling."_

Din tells himself he should have seen this coming. This is _so_ Cara he feels stupid for not anticipating such a cheeky retort.

"Why did I even ask," he sighs, unable to keep the amusement out of his tone.

They laugh together, her arms still on his shoulders, his hand still on her neck. It exorcises the last vestige of doubt left, washing it away until it's a distant memory, and all that's left is what brought them to this in the first place: plain, stupid _hope._

“So,” Cara's teeth dig coyly into her bottom lip. “Can we kiss or is it forbidden or something?”

A shiver runs down Din's spine.

_Kiss._

Can it be so simple? How did they even get to this point? Just minutes ago he was feeling hurt and rejected and now...

“You really want this?” he inquires, like she just asked him to do something horrible to her.

“ _You,”_ Cara corrects. “I want _you.”_

“You don't have to-”

“Okay, you know what?” she cuts him off impatiently. “I'll give you three seconds to kiss me, then I'm gonna walk away. One...”

Din _wants_ to kiss her, but this is so sudden... Can it really be true? Can all he wanted actually be right here for him to take?

“Two...”

If he kisses Cara now, everything will change.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

He's a fool, isn't he? He _wants_ things to change. He wants it so badly he almost ruined everything to make it happen.

“Oh, what the hell.”

Blocking every _but_ trying to stop him, he wraps his arm around Cara's waist and pulls her to himself as he lowers his lips upon hers, his fingers tangling in her hair to press her as close as he can while her lips part for him and she melts into his embrace, sighing in satisfaction with her hands fisting the front of his shirt and a smile stretching her lips under his kiss.

Din's head is spinning. He pushes Cara back until she's pinned against the tree, their sighs and their moans getting hungrier and more desperate as the kiss deepens and their touches become frantic and erratic, driven by the growing arousal. He feels Cara's tongue lick into his mouth, eager and tender at the same time, and he responds by letting his own tongue explore her, tasting the bittersweet traces of the alcohol and something else that is entirely _her._

His heart drums against his ribcage. Cara's body is taut under the softness of her curves; Din can feel the intoxicating strength of her thighs as his palms venture under the thin layer of her shorts to explore her, rewarded by a low moan that echoes in his mouth and down his throat, blinding him with a surge of arousal.

It's too much.

He breaks the kiss a split second before losing his mind and whatever little control left in him. Cara's head falls back against the tree, her arms still around Din's waist, and she's absolutely gorgeous like this, panting and dishevelled, lips wet and swollen. He traces his eyes down to her cleavage, where the shirt reveals the rise and fall of her chest, a sight almost too inebriating for Din to bear.

“That was something,” she exhales feebly, grinning so smugly he can't help feeling quite proud of himself for doing this to her.

“And long overdue."

Cara nods, taking his face into her hands. He thinks she wants to kiss him again, but all she does is draw him down until his forehead rests upon hers, then splays her fingers all over his face, following the line of his jaw, of his nose, as if she's trying to learn him by heart.

"Is this okay?" she asks, freezing for a moment. "I mean, I can't _see_ you but this kinda feels like cheating."

He's moved that she thought about this. And he's glad this isn't forbidden, because the last thing he wants right now is for her to stop. Her hands feel so good over his face, rough from the callouses but surprisingly delicate. He sneaks his hands under the hem of her shirt to curl them around her flanks, wondering what his own callouses feel like on the beautiful tenderness of her bare skin.

"As long as your eyes can't see me," he breathes. "All the rest of you can."

Cara's hands slide down to his ass and give it a firm squeeze.

 _"All_ the rest of me, uh?"

He snorts out a fond snicker.

"Why are you like this?"

The tip of Cara's nose skims over Din's in a slow, loving caress.

"I like making you laugh," she replies is a husky whisper, then rises on her toes to brush a kiss on his lips with a soft giggle. "I _love_ making you laugh."

Din doesn't know what to respond to that. He doesn't know anything any more.

All he can think about is kissing her again, so he does, just a quick, light peck, then another one, and another, and when he starts pulling back she reaches out to kiss him, instead.

Now that they've begun, it's like they can't stop.

"We just turned into the silly couple who make out under the stars I was making fun of before," Cara notes, without a single trace of shame.

"Minus the stupid pet names?"

Cara pretends to consider the idea. "I don't know. Just give me some time to come up with something."

"I dread what that little twisted mind of yours could produce."

"You should probably shut me up before it's too late, Mandork."

Despite himself, Din laughs. This woman's brains are just as beautiful as her looks.

"I don't deserve this," he protests, and Cara laughs, too, burying her face into his neck as she does.

He could happily stay like this forever – under the starry skies of Dantooine, with Cara in his arms, this incredile warmth filling up his chest like the light of the rising sun, and the pleasant weight of a new, overwhelming awareness nestled in his conscience.

_I love her._

_She loves me._

It really couldn't be any better than this.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in one sitting right after reading the opening quote on Tumblr. It gripped my heart and wouldn't let go until I finished this.
> 
> Hope this was as good to read as it was to write. I love my two messy idiots and i love to see them struggle with their own feelings. One day, maybe, I'll write Din and Cara as functional adults who can actually Talk and Face Feelings, but this is not the day.
> 
> Let me know what you think?


End file.
